From Oregon to Boulder – The early fights that shaped Charlie Kirk

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice

Some leaders visit a place. Charlie Kirk kept coming back. Heidi Ganahl saw it up close.

“Charlie always saw hope in Colorado… he never gave up on Colorado. He always came here,” she said. “He was one of the only ones that really stood strong with me when I was getting so vilified in the governor’s race… a great mentor and teacher to me.”

From her vantage point as a CU Regent and a candidate, his loyalty was unmistakable. But his roots with Colorado’s conservative movement stretch back even further, to one of the first college students he ever backed: Heidi’s daughter Tori.

Early days in Ducks country

The first spark came in 2016 after a chance introduction. Tori recalls that her grandpa sat next to Charlie at an Leadership of the Rockies retreat. The next day her phone rang.

“Hi, my name’s Charlie. I just sat next to your grandpa. I heard you’re Panhellenic president. Heard you’re conservative.”

At that point she wasn’t planning a campaign for student body president. Charlie convinced her to run and told her he would come out to help. Within days, he was on the ground in Eugene.

“He flew out to Oregon right after that call,” Tori said. “He stayed for months leading up to the election. It was like a secret mission.”

Charlie embedded himself in the effort. He spent hundreds of hours with the students, coached them on messaging and worked on strategy almost every night. He loved Oregon and “had a burning passion for the Oregon Ducks,” Tori remembered, and said he joked about his obsession for the team.

An early model takes shape

Charlie was only 21, but the Oregon project wasn’t his first. By then, he’d already backed slates at three or four campuses across the country, experimenting with a model where conservative students ran organized campaigns against entrenched progressive groups.

At Oregon, the slate branded itself “One Oregon” and leaned into practical issues. “We were going to bring Uber back to Eugene,” Tori said. When ride-share left, students were stuck with spotty options or long walks, so the campaign treated transportation as a safety issue students could feel in their daily lives. Charlie pushed that frame on purpose—belonging before politics.

To make campus politics feel welcoming, the slate staged upbeat events. They even hired the Oregon Duck for a get-together and served pizza — allowed under the rules. 

The campaign quickly turned into a crash course in bare-knuckle student politics. Opponents still tried to spin it as “pizza for votes,” filing complaint after complaint with the elections board. 

“They probably filed 10 complaints in a week… accusing us of handing out free pizza and T-shirts for votes… real-time politics,” Tori said.

Charlie coached them through the turbulence. They strategized in her Jeep, over meals at Caspian’s restaurant and he slipped into meetings wearing hats and sunglasses so no one would recognize him.

Charlie “flew in canvassers, drilled us on messaging and quoted Scripture from memory.” The style that would one day energize millions was being sharpened in campus cafeterias and borrowed living rooms.

The team made it to a runoff but ultimately lost. Tori still insists the effort wasn’t wasted. “[Conservatives] ended up winning recently at the University of Oregon… it took them almost 10 years to finally win a student body election there.”

After the runoff loss, the attacks didn’t fade. A university-run student newspaper published the accusations and posted them online. Friends and mentors told Tori to stand up for her name.

She says Charlie refused to let her face it alone. He walked with her into an office meeting, there to back her up as she made her case. “Charlie was in there with me with the university president. We sued the university for character defamation,” Tori recalled. “They had to take down everything off the internet.”

Oregon wasn’t a prelude. It was a parallel front.

Oregon wasn’t the only front. Even as Charlie was staying in Eugene, he was also making trips to Colorado to mentor students at CU Boulder.

“We worked to get free speech legislation passed at the Capitol and start a debate club at CU Boulder,” Heidi shared. “We brought Nigel Farage and Vicente Fox. We brought Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Alex Epstein.”

The debates drew national attention, with Farage warning that “young people are taught that one side of the argument is correct, and the other side and its proponents are evil.” Former Mexican president Vicente Fox praised the coalition for defending open debate on campus.

Charlie stood with students who faced threats and cancellations. “When told they’d get shut down… Charlie was always there mentoring them,” Tori said.

The Free to Be Coalition, co-founded by Heidi Ganahl, Marcus Fotenos and Nilam Desai, formalized the movement in 2018. Heidi’s stance as CU Regent made the principle clear: “Every square inch of campus should be protected by the First Amendment.”

Colorado and Oregon weren’t separate experiments. They were twin laboratories, one on the West Coast, the other at the foot of the Rockies, both testing Charlie’s vision of how young conservatives could fight back.

How he helped Heidi

Charlie’s mentoring reached Heidi too. He gave her counsel, steadied her during political storms and pushed her toward boldness when retreat might have been easier.

“He would always answer my texts… he taught me to be fearless… and the importance of creating Rocky Mountain Voice,” she said.

She also remembered him from when she served on Turning Point’s advisory board, trading advice about building teams, fundraising and infrastructure. Charlie wasn’t just a coach for students—he guided leaders learning to stand in the public square.

Faith that moved people

Charlie’s fire was rooted in faith. “He loved God and loved Jesus… he made that the core of everything he did,” Tori said. She added that even as one of the busiest people she had ever known, “he always took a day of Sabbath.”

Faith left marks on those around him. Adam, one of Tori’s friends who ran on the slate for student government, later spent two years in Israel deepening his Jewish faith after long talks with Charlie. It was one of many examples of how his influence extended beyond politics.

Years later, in the green room at Charis Bible College, he told her he’d been praying for her and recalled the Oregon fights. She was moved that he knew she’d been battling Lyme disease even though they hadn’t spoken in years. 

Turning Point USA had grown into a national force, but to Charlie, friends still mattered — and Tori was one.

What loss leaves behind

Tori believes his death will not diminish the movement but amplify it.

“Charlie has literally built an army… millions… and I think the way that he was taken will ignite an even larger fire… the work that he started will be finished.”

For Heidi, the call is practical. She says conservatives in Colorado need to back the students Charlie never stopped believing in. “One of the key things I tell conservative groups around Colorado is go adopt a college student… we are not there for our young people in Colorado right now.”

Heidi pressed the point that supporting young conservatives takes more than words. She urged people to show up in person — at Turning Point meetings, at College Republican gatherings, even with something as simple as bringing food to keep students going.

From a couch in Eugene to a debate stage in Boulder to prayers whispered backstage at Charis Bible College, Charlie Kirk never gave up on this state. 

His legacy is faith, free speech and the charge to carry forward a fire that won’t be silenced.